


anemoia

by betweenforever (asukaflying)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 06:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4252953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asukaflying/pseuds/betweenforever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongin looks at old photos and imagines the life inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	anemoia

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [23emotions](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/23emotions) collection. 



> raison d'être: because bunny  
> [inspiration](https://youtu.be/wH6ZCIRjI14)

Sometimes Jongin goes through old photo albums and runs his fingers over the faces in shades of grainy colour and sepia. His parents, his grandparents, other people he's never met. He likes to collect old photographs, imagines what it would be like to be living in their world. A world that he can never travel to, no matter how far he drives, how fast he flies, how much money he pays.  
  
_The past is a foreign country,_ he thinks at night, looking up at the blank ceiling, the shadows of leaves drifting across the white, silhouettes he can't touch with his hands, only let his fingers drift over the plaster barrier.  
  
There's a face that catches his attention the most. The photographs aren't as old, just grainy instant camera prints, the colours already dissolving, as though the seconds are slowly eating away a reality that is lost forever. A boy, smiling, face turned away from the camera. Jongin wonders what he's thinking, follows the boy's line of sight into the forest, but there 's no one there, only the dim recesses of the shadows under a canopy of leaves. The car, pushing the edges of the other side of the photograph, is a make and model that isn't sold anymore. The company doesn't even exist, folding after one of the many economic crises.  
  
Jongin looks at the photograph, dreams about slipping across the border, breathing the clean air of a northern wilderness. He wakes with tears in his eyes.  
  
There are many other photographs of the boy. Jongin lines them up, flips between pages, traces the boy's face with the tips of his fingers, skin sliding over the plastic photo album pockets. When he slips the photographs out, to press his fingers to, it's a difficult sacrifice because he knows it's not acid-free paper, that every time he touches he's destroying a little more of a past he can't touch, and yet he can't help it.  
  
It's the matte finish photographs he likes the most, the tiny grooves of his fingertips slipping in closer to the surface. There's a particular photograph, the boy is smiling at the camera, and Jongin feels like, if he could only get closer, crawl through the borders of this tiny mirror onto an inaccessible world, fall into the sunlight and the the wind and the faded noise of a city square, he could see who the boy was looking at.  
  
"Who are you looking at?" Jongin whispers, but the boy doesn't blink, can't hear him. Of course, he's in the past. Jongin slips the photograph back into the plastic pocket of the photo album and lets the leather fall closed, leaving the album sitting alone, abandoned on the table as he slips outside and walks to the same square, the same wind whipping through his hair, the same background of voices talking in more languages than he can understand. But he's too late, the boy and the invisible photographer are already gone, there's no evidence, no clue that can help him unravel this mystery.  
  
Jongin takes a photograph of himself, staring into the same spot as the boy, but his face, when it comes out on the instax, isn't smiling. He looks at himself, and wishes he could slip through the white border, go back a few seconds and whisper into his ear that he should smile, but he can't.  
  
_The past is a foreign country, even one's own._  
  
Jongin tries not to think about it, not to dwell on it, but the thought is lodged in his head, and one morning he can't help it anymore. He takes a magnifying glass and opens the photo album, slipping the the photograph out to lie, lonely, on the glass-topped table.  
  
The magnifying glass isn't good enough, he can only get a vague glimpse of the image reflected in the boy's eyes, enough to know that it's something, but not what that something is.  
  
Jongin slides the photograph onto the glass bed of the scanner, and brings the photograph up on his computer screen, runs it through a sharpener and a garbage screen. The photograph's balance is ruined, the delicate blur of the focus smashed into sharp relief, but Jongin doesn't care. He just wants to see what the boy is looking at.  
  
He zooms in, sharpens, zooms in again and runs a filler. The face of a person, not the photographer like he first suspected but someone else, a little further away, comes slowly into focus.  
  
With the last click, Jongin blinks. Looks. Blinks again.  
  
There's a knock at the door, the sound of numbers being pressed as the electronic lock opens with the shrill trill of a song.  
  
"Hi honey," Yifan says, as the door swings shut and he leans forward to wrap Jongin in a hug. "Did you miss me?"  
  
"Of course," Jongin replies, wrinkling up his nose, but laughing as Yifan swings him around in a circle. "I hope you took some good photographs while you were away to make up for it."  
  
Yifan just grins, gesturing to the knapsack on his back. "I think you won't be disappointed," he says, and gives Jongin a small kiss on the tip of his nose before stepping back to slide the heavy bag off his back and set it down on the floor. Jongin can't help it, he jumps up and slides his arm around Yifan's neck, pressing his nose into his husband's neck.  
  
"Next time I don't care about deadlines," he whispers, "I'm going with you too."  
  
Yifan nods, and wraps his husband in a warm hug. "Of course." Jongin smiles back and pushes Yifan towards the sofa, where he can indulge in all the shameless cuddling he's been lacking, looking forward to the end of the business trip when he would be able to once again drink up the warm of Yifan's skin, press his face to the hollow in his throat and just breathe.  
  
There's a click, the sound of Yifan snapping a photograph with his phone, and Jongin grins into the dip of his skin.  
  
On the computer screen, Jongin's face peers out of the photograph.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted [here](http://betweenforever.livejournal.com/863.html)


End file.
